The Universe Looks Impossibly Fine-Tuned. Is God the Best Explanation?

Comments · 456

• MI

  @mileskdonahue · 2 weeks ago

  Thank you for having us on, John! It was a blast :)

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• MR

  @MrTickely · 13 days ago (edited)

  @<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pghn5-6Pi_s&amp;t=1287">21:27</a> Alex: &quot;I was thinking about this on the train up here&quot;<br>@<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pghn5-6Pi_s&amp;t=1798">29:58</a> Alex: &quot;I was thinking about this on the train on the way down&quot;<br><br>Blatant contradiction, checkmate atheist. &nbsp; /s

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• MA

  @magnetsarecool-i1u · 10 days ago

  There&apos;s something odd to me about the amount of work being asked for from the two &quot;sides&quot;. The strength of fine-tuning is dependent on the enormous amount of work and time that we&apos;ve put into fundamental theories of physics, so the naturalist is supposed to include all of that when answering why the universe is apparently fine-tuned. But when the theist answers why the universe is fine-tuned, apparently &quot;life is good, so maybe God would fine-tune the universe for it&quot; is sufficient.

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• AR

  @armadyl1212 · 12 days ago (edited)

  It&apos;s nice to see two very high level thinkers in this area have such an open discussion, rather than &quot;debate bro&quot; punching down shit with jackasses like Jay Dyer and Andrew Wilson

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• ST

  @steve112285 · 13 days ago

  Fine-tuning assumes that the relative values of physical parameters could have varied independently, but I suspect that when we have better theories of physics, we&apos;ll find that they&apos;re interrelated and their values can be predicted. &nbsp;So there is no fine-tuning because tuning is not possible.

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• CH

  @chris12321246801 · 13 days ago

  Miles argues that it&apos;s unlikely that deeper physics would significantly weaken the fine-tuning argument, because there are so many apparently independent fine-tuned values. On this view, there would need to be deeper physics explaining each of the cosmological constant, the initial low entropy of the universe, etc.<br><br>But this still seems analogous to Alex&apos;s &quot;deeper biology&quot; example. Imagine that 200 years ago someone had said: &quot;Maybe there is a deeper biological explanation for the human eye, but it&apos;s very unlikely that there are independent deeper biological explanations for the human eye, the bacterial flagellum, the immune system, the blood-clotting cascade, etc.&quot; The problem is that this assumes that the apparent independence of these phenomena at one explanatory level will persist at a deeper level.<br><br>It&apos;s entirely possible that a deeper physical theory could reveal that apparently distinct fine-tuned features are consequences of a common underlying principle, in much the same way that Darwinian evolution provided a common explanatory framework for a wide range of seemingly independent biological phenomena. So the fact that we currently identify many apparently independent instances of fine-tuning doesn&apos;t, by itself, tell us much about whether they would remain independent under a deeper theory.

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• EG

  @EgoArch · 13 days ago

  Been waiting for this I&apos;m hyped

• PH

  @PhilHalper1 · 13 days ago (edited)

  Great chat and well done &nbsp;to &nbsp;all in making this happen. I would like to say that &nbsp;think it&apos;s very questionable Miles&apos;s quoting the paper I co-authored, surveying physicists. This was, I believe, the largest survey of physicists ever done. We asked them a number of questions, one of which was about fine-tuning. Miles claims that the majority of physicists accept that there&apos;s fine-tuning in the universe. I think that is dubious. Out of the answers that were unambiguously supporting that conclusion, only 35% of physicists took that view. And I take that by adding up the explanation by an intelligent designer, which was 9%, an explanation via a Darwinian process in the cosmos, which was 6%, and anthropic selection and a multiverse, which was 20%. That gives us 35%. On top of that, there was 10% other and 13% no opinion. <br><br>The ones that I guess are in question here are the brute facts and the principal explanation. So the brute fact explanation, the actual text that we have is that the constants are brute facts that need no further explanation. I think if they need no further explanation, to me that&apos;s implying that physicists are saying that these numbers are what they are and there&apos;s nothing to be explained. We don&apos;t need any deeper explanation. Claims that they are improbable are to be rejected. So i dont think you can include that as they are fine-tuned for life at all. The other explanation that we ran was that the values of the constants are set by a principle, such as the naturalness principle forbidding a theory to have independently fine-tuned parameters. So again, I think that&apos;s questionable to include .<br><br>The brute facts that need no explanation had 26%, so was actually the most popular answer &nbsp;and the set by principle explanation had 16%, so that was the third most popular answer. I think what Miles is doing there is adding those two in and getting a higher number, but I don&apos;t think it&apos;s legitimate to add those two in. What&apos;s clear, and I think very unambiguous, is that the narrative that we&apos;re told that you have to choose between an intelligent designer and a multiverse is certainly not one that&apos;s supported by physicists. So in our survey, the multiverse and intelligent designer, add them together and you don&apos;t even get a third of physicists. So this narrative that you sort of have to choose between these two is definitely not supported by physicists in our survey.

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• OP

  @OpTicFormaLFatt · 14 hours ago

  How could Miles know that our universe can’t be a “5 second universe” as perceived by beings experiencing time differently in another universe?

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• CA

  @carlafoss9248 · 12 days ago

  I could listen to this kind of debate all day! Love it!

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• MR

  @MrVentanamarilla · 13 days ago

  I really enjoyed the conversation and I guess I&apos;m going to be that guy who recommends the obvious: A Fortunate Universe, great great book!

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• KA

  @kaseabernathy3642 · 13 days ago (edited)

  Time to listen to philosophers talk about physics. It seems so strange to have these conversations; no one wants to listen to scientists talk about philosophy, so why do we listen to philosophers talk about physics?

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